


Female-Presenting Jellyfish

by pikestaff



Category: BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Fear the wrath of Misaki, Fluff, Hugs, It's kind of absurd just like HHW, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pikestaff/pseuds/pikestaff
Summary: The Bandori universe's version of Tumblr decides to flag a bunch of Kanon's innocent jellyfish pictures as explicit.  Misaki takes matters into her own hands.





	Female-Presenting Jellyfish

Kanon looked unusually distressed when Misaki found her in the cafe. She was staring at her phone and fretting, looking up every so often with a terribly worried expression on her face before going back to looking at her phone. Misaki had just dropped in to grab a coffee and leave, but she glanced back at Kanon the whole time she was in line. Ultimately she decided that this was just depressing. She couldn't go without at least figuring out what was going on with Kanon. So, once she had her drink in hand, she pulled up a seat at her table and sat down.

Kanon looked up in surprise. Clearly she hadn't seen Misaki approach, or even seen her in line. "Um... hi, Misaki-chan," she said.

"What's up?" Misaki got right to the point. "Did something happen?"

"Fuee... sort of..." Kanon looked away. "It's kind of silly..."

"Well... what is it?" Misaki hoped she didn't come off as rude. Sometimes Kanon could really take a while to get to the point, though.

"I... guess I can tell you, Misaki-chan," said Kanon. "I downloaded an app a little while ago that lets you make your own blog and post whatever you want on it. So, I made one for jellyfish and cute things. I thought if these things were nice for me to look at, they would be nice for other people to look at too. But something happened today and..."

"...and?" Misaki was deeply curious. She had no idea where Kanon could possibly be going with this.

"Well... look." Kanon held out her phone.

Misaki took it and read the notification aloud. "'Our community guidelines have been updated and we will no longer allow adult content on our app. It has come to our attention that several of your posts contain adult content and those posts have been flagged for deletion. We would appreciate your cooperation in the future.'"

"Fuee," Kanon said again, looking truly distraught.

"Hmm," said Misaki. She gave the phone back to her. "It doesn't make any sense for this website to have sent you a message like this if you were just posting pictures of jellyfish. Are you sure you weren't posting anything else?"

"Well... I might have posted one or two other things..." said Kanon.

Misaki raised her eyebrows. "Like what?"

"Like... jellyfish shaped cookies." Kanon looked like she was near tears at this point.

Even though it was probably kind of a mean thing to do in this situation, Misaki couldn't help but smile a bit at Kanon's response. "So... you posted pictures of jellyfish and jellyfish shaped cookies, and nothing else?"

"I think some other cute sweets, too? Muffins... a cake... things like that... but... but nothing that would be against the app's rules!" Kanon stressed. "And certainly nothing... well... expli... you know."

Misaki believed her. She couldn't imagine Kanon ever posting something like that on a jellyfish aesthetic blog. Still, it had become a sort of mystery, and she wanted to help. Partially because she was genuinely curious, and partially because it was just depressing seeing Kanon in such a state. "Can I see the posts that the app marked for deletion?"

"Of... of course, Misaki-chan!" Kanon fiddled with her phone for a few moments, and then handed it back to Misaki.

Misaki looked down at the app and began to scroll through Kanon's posts. Sure enough, several of them had been marked as explicit. And, sure enough, they were all pictures of jellyfish or jellyfish related things. There were photos of real jellyfish, jellyfish art, and several cute photos of plush jellyfish or various jellyfish sweets. As far as Misaki could tell, the only thing that they all had in common was that they all involved jellyfish. And how on earth could jellyfish be construed as adult content? Misaki was sure it was some sort of dumb bot flagging the posts, but even so...

...oh. Right. Jellyfish were round and many of them were flesh-colored.

Well.

"Kanon-san," said Misaki tentatively. "This... is probably going to sound kind of strange, but I think I know why the app is flagging your posts."

"Why?" Kanon asked, with genuine concern in her eyes.

"Well, um... oh, jeez." Misaki had no idea how to say this without saying it straight out. "Well, jellyfish are kind of round, and some of them look like, um... like a girl, kind of?"

"Like a girl?" Kanon's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

"You're... not... getting this at all, are you." Misaki sighed and smiled wryly again, mostly at her own amusement of this entire situation. It wasn't Kanon's fault that she didn't quite get what Misaki was trying to beat around the bush to say. "So... you know. The app doesn't like adult content. That means, like, pictures of naked girls and things. And I think the app thinks that jellyfish look like--"

" _Oh!!_ " Kanon cut her off and her face turned bright red as she realized what she was trying to say. "But that's... not..."

"I know," said Misaki. "It's all really stupid, for a lot of reasons." She wasn't going to bore Kanon with those reasons, although she was certainty going to think about them and rant to herself about it. It was stupid for an app to suddenly about face and ban such content if it had been allowed before, it was stupid that pictures of girls were considered bad to begin with, and it was especially stupid that the app had a robot that was flagging innocent posts of jellyfish as explicit.

"So... what do I do?" Kanon asked. She was still very distraught, and in that moment Misaki decided that all of this was mostly stupid because it was making Kanon sad. Kanon was cute, and no one so cute should have to be sad like this.

"Well..." Misaki hadn't actually thought much about _doing_ anything. But now that Kanon had mentioned it, she kind of wanted to. "I guess... you can try to dispute what the app has done? Isn't there a way you can do that? I thought I saw one."

"Do you think they'll even listen to me?" Kanon's eyes were glistening with what Misaki thought were tears, and that was even more depressing than all of this already was. "If they already decided that jellyfish look like... well... you know..."

"I'll help you," said Misaki before even really realizing it.

"Really? You would do that for me?" Kanon asked.

"Well, yeah, of course... just... don't look at me like I'm some sort of knight in shining armor," Misaki said, because Kanon was looking at her as though she were exactly that. "Anyway," she continued, because suddenly she was feeling weirdly self-conscious. "Here." She was still holding Kanon's phone, and she pulled up the dispute dialogue box. It was here that she realized she wasn't really sure what to put. _Hi, I think you think these jellyfish look like boobs?_ That was... the truth, but also absurd. But then again, this whole situation was absurd, wasn't it? The more she thought about it the more she felt sort of righteously indignant on Kanon's behalf. That spurred her into writing a piece of her mind into the app's dispute box. Well, sort of. She tried to be polite. It was Kanon's account, after all.

Once she was done, she handed the phone back to Kanon. "I don't know if that will help," she said truthfully. "I think the people who work on that app must be kind of dumb, if they're going to go around flagging pictures of jellyfish."

"Thank you," said Kanon, and she smiled brightly. So brightly that Misaki wasn't sure what to make of it. It was kind of strange, wasn't it, to jump from a sad emotion to a happy one so quickly? Kanon could certainly feel things deeply. Misaki wondered what that was like. Most days sort of went by for her in a grayish haze. Kanon interrupted her thoughts, then, and said, "If this doesn't work, or if something else happens, is it okay if I call you? I might need more help."

"Okay," said Misaki. She'd gotten herself into this whole mess, so it made sense that now she was sort of stuck here. She felt a bit awkward about it all, though, and decided to change the subject and started to talk about the band instead. She also noticed that her coffee was starting to get cold. Whoops.

 

Misaki had been trying to make sense of some of Kokoro's scribblings so she could turn them into a new song when she got the call from Kanon that evening. "Hello?" she said as she picked up.

"Fuee... it's awful..." Kanon sounded extremely distressed on the other end of the line. "The app got back to me and told me they were still going to delete my jellyfish posts..."

"What?" It came out more sharply than Misaki intended, but she was angry on Kanon's behalf. Did the stupid app have stupid bots running their stupid dispute center, too?

"I don't know," said Kanon. "Maybe I really am doing something wrong..."

"You're not doing anything wrong," said Misaki. "And I'm going to figure out how to fix it."

"Really?" Kanon's voice seemed to light up, and Misaki couldn't help but wish that she had been there in person to see it.

"Y... yeah," said Misaki, realizing suddenly what she'd just gotten herself into. She had... really pledged to take on an app and its stupid robots, hadn't she? Well, now that she had said it, she couldn't exactly unsay it. That would just make Kanon sad, and that was a truly tragic thought. "I'll figure something out."

"Misaki-chan... you're amazing," said Kanon.

For some reason that made Misaki blush. "Ah... stop that," she said, but she was smiling as she said it. She couldn't help it. Kanon just sort of made you want to smile. "Don't say those types of things until I've actually fixed it, at least."

"Okay," said Kanon. "But still... thank you so much!"

Then they got off the phone and Misaki sighed. Okay. She had just promised Kanon that she would fix a problem involving an app that was owned by business that probably employed hundreds of people. ...no big deal, right?

She called herself an idiot in her head, and then decided that, well, there was no time to wait.

Misaki was up most of the night. She dug around online until she found enough information that she could actually call the company and speak with someone instead of dealing with emails or robo-callers. Not that there was anything she could do at the moment, when the company was closed, but she wanted to be prepared. She did research and found out exactly who ran the company and what made them tick. She looked into their past projects and found their weak points. She made a precise plan of how to get to talking to who she wanted to talk to. It was all kind of thrilling, really. Originally she had started doing this because she'd made a sort of dumb promise to Kanon that she didn't want to backpedal on, but a few hours into her project she had multiple new and inspiring reasons. She was doing this because it was incredibly stupid that an app would tag photos of jellyfish as explicit in the first place. She was doing this because she was extremely annoyed that the app had then apparently decided, after a supposed review, that they were still explicit.

But, mostly, she was doing it for Kanon's honor. Kanon was too good and pure for this nonsense.

Besides, then she would get to see Kanon smile, and...

...oh, okay, she was getting distracted. Back to the plan.

Misaki finally decided to take a nap when it was almost morning and she felt confident that her plan was ready. She had already decided to skip school for the day. This, she decided, was more important.

After her nap, she yawned, stretched, made some coffee, and then put everything into motion. She called the company's help line and initially reached a customer service representative, as she had expected she would. She knew the poor sod probably wasn't making much more than minimum wage, so she was polite as she could as she asked to speak to a supervisor. The rep was glad to pass her off, and so Misaki was on the line with the supervisor in minutes.

This was when things began to get difficult. Misaki said firmly that she had a problem that customer service could not solve, and would probably have to speak to someone even higher up than the supervisor. The supervisor balked at this, presumably because he didn't want to get in trouble with _his_ manager. But Misaki was relentless. She pressed and pressed until finally she got through to someone else.

Now _this_ person, whoever they were, was truly stubborn. Misaki explained the situation in its entirety, and all the person on the line did was apologize but say that nothing could be done. Misaki refused to give in. She was doing this on sheer principle now and she was not going to lose.

Finally the person on the line said that they could reverse the individual posts that had been flagged on Kanon's blog, but that they couldn't guarantee that her posts wouldn't be flagged in the future.

Misaki said that that wasn't good enough.

And so she was passed to someone even higher up in the company.

This person was very clearly annoyed as Misaki once again explained the situation and ended by saying, "Flagging anything on this blog as explicit is pointless and a waste of time. All she posts are jellyfish and cakes and plushies and that sort of thing. I'm sure your bots would appreciate being able to skip looking at one blog."

The man on the phone was not happy, but Misaki persisted. Even if there was currently no way for the bots to skip Kanon's blog, well, a way could be programmed in. Not that Misaki really cared how they fixed the problem. She just wanted it fixed.

The man was persistent. "I'm very sorry," he said. "But I already told you. We cannot make an exception for one blog. If we did that, then everyone would want an exception."

Misaki took a sip of coffee and then put the mug down slowly. "You do know," she said carefully into the phone, "That I am part of a highly influential band." _Highly influential_ was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but hey. When she had done her research, she had found out that companies like this were all about influence, so she was going to use that to her advantage.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure you are," said the annoyed man.

"I write the songs for our band," said Misaki. "I could even write one about just how stupid your app is..."

"If that's supposed to be a threat, it doesn't scare me," said the man on the line.

"That's a shame," said Misaki. "Because I've got some very nice DJ equipment and I have access to some very nice speakers that could project my new song all across a live house. And then imagine if it was a big hit... then we would tour and take it to live houses all across the country..."

Now the man was starting to sound nervous. "That's... preposterous," he said.

Misaki could hear the fear in his voice, though. That meant it was time to twist the knife. "Do you know the Tsurumaki family? I go to school with a Tsurumaki. We're in the same class, and we're friends. We're very, very close." That hurt a tiny bit to say, because here she was admitting that she was apparently "very close" with the school's biggest nutball, but she had to do it for Kanon's honor. "I'm sure she and her family would make sure that any song we made became a big hit..."

"I... will see what I can do," the man gulped.

"Thank you," said Misaki. Victory. Well, almost. "Can I get your phone number and extension? Just in case I have to call you later."

 

The next morning Misaki went back to school. Almost as soon as she arrived, Kanon ran up to her and pulled her into a very tight (and very cozy) hug. "Misaki-chan! You did it!"

"I did?" Misaki actually had a pretty good idea of what Kanon was talking about, but she was very distracted by her hug.

"Yeah!" Kanon pulled away (which Misaki thought was unfortunate, because she was _very_ cute), and held our her phone. "Look, the app unflagged all my posts, which means they aren't in danger of getting deleted anymore. And the company president even sent me an e-mail personally apologizing!"

...company preisdent? _That's_ who Misaki had been talking to? She had threatened a CEO with Kokoro and Hello Happy World?

Well, that was valid. Those two things would probably scare most people.

"Anyway," Kanon continued, and she was beaming. "I know you said you were going to fix it, and you did. I'm so grateful. I was a little worried when you weren't at school yesterday, but... now I know you were just helping me!"

"I suppose I was," said Misaki. She smiled a bit, too. It was so hard not to when Kanon was happy. "Everything's fixed, then?" She wanted to be sure.

"Yeah," said Kanon. She was smiling fondly. "You are wonderful, Misaki-chan!"

"Eheheh..." Misaki was sure she was blushing. "You don't have to call me that, you know." Especially since it made her feel all weird inside. It was a nice kind of weird, though.

"I don't know how to thank you enough," Kanon continued. "Oh! I know! I'll change the title of my blog!"

"What?" Misaki asked.

"Well," Kanon explained, "I called it 'Kanon's Cafe', which I know is kind of silly because it's not a real cafe, it's just a blog on an app. But I thought it sounded cute and nice. But I'll change it to 'Kanon and Misaki's Cafe!'"

"You... don't have to do that, really," said Misaki.

But Kanon was already changing it on her app, and when she showed it to Misaki, Misaki had to admit to herself that their names next to each other did look awfully cute together. So...

"Do you like it?" Kanon asked.

"Yeah," said Misaki.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, in case you were wondering, one of my tumblr mutuals actually DID get photos of jellyfish flagged as explicit. Because of course they did.
> 
> \--
> 
> I'm on tumblr: http://punk-mahoucore.tumblr.com
> 
> and twitter!: http://twitter.com/pikestaff


End file.
